Estera Eljaševaitė ir žydų liaudies universiteto idėja tarpukario Kaune

Abstract

ESTHER ELYASHEV AND THE IDEA OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE’S UNIVERSITY IN INTERWAR KAUNAS This article dwells on newly found documents held in the Judaica collection of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania which were part of the collection of personal documents of Esther Elyashev-Veisbart (1878–1941). She was a literary critic, journalist and teacher, studied philosophy at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Bern, and defended a doctoral dissertation in philosophy. In St Petersburg, she worked together with the famous historian and leader of the folkist movement Simon Dubnow. In 1921, she moved to Kaunas, where she sought to establish the Jewish People’s University. Esther became the chair of the board of the Society for the Dissemination of Higher Education among the Jews, and founded higher Jewish courses in Kaunas, which were transformed into the Jewish People’s University in 1926. Esther’s initiative illustrates a common transnational trend, typical of many Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, these educational initiatives are evidence of certain important factors regarding the situation of national minorities in interwar Lithuania: although Jewish folkists identified with the states (societies) in which they lived much more than the Zionists, like most other states in the region, interwar Lithuania was a nationalising nation-state. Therefore, public figures such as Esther Elyashev were looking for opportunities for the education of their ‘own’ community outside the framework of state institutions.